“I guess that part is right,” admitted Frank. “I mean about Bossy going there to buy one of these gay handkerchiefs. But just because he did doesn’t make him guilty. In fact, what object would he have in taking some trophy cups that he could get very little for if they were melted up, and nothing for, if he tried to sell them as they were? No one would buy them, for on the face of them they show what they are. Some were engraved with the Boxer Hall fellows’ names. And the other jewelry wasn’t so very valuable. Bossy wouldn’t have any object in taking that. He’s got more money now, than is good for him.”
“He might have been gambling, and gotten short of cash, and been afraid of asking his folks,” suggested Sid, remembering an ordeal he had gone through in having a relative under similar circumstances, as I related in “Batting to Win.”
“I don’t believe it,” declared Frank. “To my mind I’d sooner suspect this Mendez. He seems a fishy sort of character.”
“Oh, I think he’s straight,” declared Tom. “I made some inquiries about him while I was having grub. It seems some of the fellows here have been buying stuff of him—last year when he was traveling around the country. He bears a good reputation, and Hendell’s father, who owns part of Crest Island, was telling me that the property owners looked up his record well before they let him succeed old Jake Blasdell as caretaker.”
“Hum!” mused Frank. “It doesn’t look as easy as it did at first, in spite of these clues, Tom.”
“That’s right. Say, I’m not as much of a detective as I thought. I wonder if that jeweler could be double-crossing us?”
“What do you mean?” asked Sid.
“I mean could he have lost the box of jewelry overboard before his boat was carried away by the flood? If he did, he could make up the story that he left it in the locker, and that someone else got it when the boat was wrecked.”
“That’s possible, though not probable,” admitted Frank. “Fellows, my advice is that we put these things away, and forget all about them to-night. In the morning we may see matters clearer. I’ve got to do some boning anyhow. Put ’em away, Tom.”
Soon only the ticking of the fussy, little alarm clock was heard, mingled with the rattle of paper as books were leafed or as the lads wrote out their lessons. Even the clock stopped after a bit, and the sudden silence was so startling that Phil exclaimed: